Album Review: Kill Everything - Headless Cum Dumpster
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
To a greater extent than on virtually any other release I’ve reviewed for this website, the way you feel about this album is going to come down not to how you feel about a given genre, or group of bands within that genre, or even a single band. It’s going to come down to how you feel about a single album, and that’s Devourment’s “Molesting the Decapitated”. Yes, yes, I’m aware that plenty of albums aping that release exist, but considering the cross-pollination between the memberships of Kill Everything and Devourment, it’s clear that the influence comes from the original source. There’s an up and a downside to that. If you like that first Devourment offering – which I do – then there’s a robust chance that this too is going to float a whole armada worth of your boats. On the other hand, there is nothing – literally nothing – that advances from the blueprint; if you never cared for “Molesting the Decapitated” in the first place, you won’t come close to conversion from this album either. All this preamble is to come to a singular point: Slam is one of the easiest genres in metal to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do well. I think, if you’ll permit me to outline why, that Kill Everything are in fact doing the genre well, and I’m going to do so by outlining a few key things that make “Molesting the Decapitated” so amazing and comparing them against Kill Everything’s works.
Heaviness
“Molesting the Decapitated” is, from first second to last, one of the most revoltingly heavy albums ever crafted. Listening at any volume worthy of the name is like stepping into a blast furnace, just this endless wave of intensity that batters and smothers and envelopes, utterly relentless in it’s obsessive need to destroy. Similarly, this new Kill Everything is abrasive to an extent that begins to defy description. It’s like being caught in the gears of something, some vast industrial contraption of pistons and lashing axles that pulps and smears you amid the machinery. It’s such a concussive experience, that high pitched snare popping through this heaving morass of overbearing distortion, so raw that when it picks up speed it blends into this mountainous edifice of unbridled heaviness. It wouldn’t work for every genre, but when the order of the day is planetary depopulation via death metal it operates seamlessly. I like my slam raw and bloody, and with Kill Everything as my trusty maitre d’ I’d be hard pressed for better service.
Groove
But there’s more to it than just a production that hits like jogging into a lamp post; you need the means with which to leverage such eviscerating presentation. “Molesting the Decapitated” did this magnificently with gore-drenched chunks of unruly, unstoppable aggression like “Festering Vomitous Mass” or “Shroud of Encryption” that had these gigantic haymaker slams that felt akin to being beaten with a paving slab. Kill Everything match them blow for blow with similarly ruthless displays of ferocity – “Excoriated Integumental Sludge Alter” rolls in on a wave of kick drums to drop into bestial palm muted slamcraft that I had to turn down for fear of dislodging nearby masonry. “Human Tripa Tacos” has the unlovable sway a man adopts when cradling armfuls of his own guts. It’s probably the most “slammy” – for want of a better word – of the songs here; it’s rancid, hideous in it’s corruption. There are moments when the album will be slamming away with a rambunctious ardour, then play the same riff but slooooooower, and it is as punishing as an SUV smashing you into a brick wall, just these in-conquerable negations of your capacity to resist immediate stank face tomahawk into you again and again with unassailable power.
Variability
The thing with slam is that it’s very, very easy to do it poorly (*cough* Artery Eruption *cough*). The amount of bands with indecipherable logos and a generic picture of someone enduring one unspeakable variety of agony or another – normally a woman, because especially in it’s formative years this whole subgenre was pathetically obsessive in it’s depiction of violence against women both visually and thematically – riveted to bargain-bin chromatic slam riffs barely if ever in time with the drums, is beyond count at this point. You got to have a bit more spice to the mix, some niftier tricks to move things outside the absolute basics of the style. “Molesting the Decapitated’s" aptitude is obvious – it speeds up and slows down, slipping from crushing grooves to cauterising blasts with a wholly underrated zeal. Kill Everything are likewise no slouches at similar methods; The title track mutates from the pus-slicked swing of it’s introduction to a molten hail of blast beats through the judicious interjection of multiple drum fills, only to slam back into more brutish, fracturing grooves. Elsewhere “Maggot Frenzy” rolls between the fulminating storm of gravity blasts and slams calculated to disintegrate matter for miles around. Kill Everything, in common with the source material, are marvellously adept at swapping and switching between approaches, transitioning not just to ensure maximum annihilation at all turns, but also in service of the all important aim of just making sure it just never gets boring to be stomped into paste.
Catchiness
Hooks are important, even here. Which isn’t to say you’ll be getting many singalong choruses. If you’re coming into it expecting those…perhaps this isn’t the album for you. Nonetheless, in spite of the relentless bludgeoning of both “Molesting the Decapitated” and Headless Cum Dumpster… you know what, I’ll point that out as a flaw, I really do dislike titles like that. I do have a review coming up which seemed like a more appropriate place to discuss matters of this type, but the abstract of it is that these blatantly misogynistic stylings flounder at just about every level; they’re ubiquitous to the extent that all possible shock value died long, long years ago, they’re indistinct from any other similarly uninspired titles, they’re almost criminally uninventive, never clever, never interesting, never anything beyond puerile at best and the nauseatingly fetishistic vomitus of diseased, calcified intellects at worst. But irrespective of it’s inane name, the album is addictive – I’m reviewing it so obviously I’ve got to listen to it a bunch in order for my pronouncement upon it to bear weight, but more than that I find myself compelled to repeat listens, bouncing from foot to foot in anticipation at the opening sample on “Fermented Drippings”, and then launching around the room like a rabid badger as that rapturous tidal surge of growls, blasts and distortion crashes over me.
What Kill Everything have done here is basically take that illustrious Devourment template and…do absolutely nothing new with it. Very well, they didn’t really need to – if it aint broke, don’t fix it, and the crazed pugnaciousness of the endeavour suits me to a T. But the pitfalls exist nonetheless. I’m not so pithy as to accuse the album of musical plagiarism (I’m not sure I could when ex-members of Devourment are in the band – is it even possible to plagiarise yourself?) but it’s so close that all you’d need is a few tweaks to the production and every note would slot seamlessly into “Molesting the Decapitated”. It’s short, and at least one of the songs (Infatuated with Homicide) has been floating around for years now. It’s lousy with the type of doesn’t-bother-me-but-might-bother-you cautionary notices that make any recommendation quiver under a billion caveats; the drumming isn’t particularly tight, riffs often get buried in the human sludge of distortion and growling, there’s little variation to the vocals, melody is fleeting at best…again, none of this is a disqualifier for me because I revel in shit like this, but could it sour anyone else’s affections? Absolutely. It’s strange in that I don’t think it’s as good as “Molesting the Decapitated”., despite it being almost identical in concept. I suppose it’s a case of “Molesting the Decapitated” having just done the thing better, but that shouldn’t be taken as a condemnation of Kill Everything’s work – by all accounts, if this breed of death metal is one with which you can connect, then I think you’ll love your time with it. Who knows, perhaps you’ll even come to view it the same way I have – not as a rip off, or a homage, but as a sibling – a relative crafted with respect and adherence to the factors that made “Molesting the Decapitated” so good. A worthy companion piece to one of the greatest examples of the genre there has ever been.
